I can’t put my hands on the thing right now, but I’m pretty sure that the Parenting Manual I was issued when my kids were born deemphasized the importance of keeping up with changes in the way they do things as they grow up. The worksheets and hand-written essays of their younger years have changed into collaborative work done online as they “matured” into high-schoolers.

Has it changed the work? Maybe less than it first appears. Technology may change human behavior, but it doesn’t really change human nature. Most kids don’t much like doing homework, and cloud services haven’t done a lot to change that. What’s interesting is that the kids, teachers, and administrators I talked to generally like the flexibility of using cloud-based classroom tools, but none of them think it has fundamentally changed classroom life.

Why can’t we see your homework?

My two boys are sophomores at the Institute of Collaborative Education, a public New York City middle/high school with about 80 kids in each of the six grades. ICE puts most of its educational emphasis on project work; the kids have a fairly major project to complete for each class in each quarter, many of them collaborating with either a small group or with their class as a whole within a cloud environment.

One of the results is that my wife and I—who, while we for many years have not so much scrutinized every piece of homework as just tried to make sure that assignments were at least done—haven’t seen anything they’ve handed in for years. This, frankly, makes us uncomfortable. But in an age of online homework, it’s a discomfort we’ll probably have to just get over.

In separate interviews—and they really were interviews and not interrogations—the boys claimed that this is not the result of 15-year-old boys naturally hiding their business from their parents. It’s just, as Michael told me, that it’s simpler to do something on the computer, upload it to their Google Drive, and click Share with their teachers.

Jeremy, his brother, noted that Google Docs keeps track of who did what on a shared document, and when. When a grade depends in part on what group member contributed how much (and whether the group did things over time or crammed it into the last evening before the deadline), that kind of accountability is important.

But this process raises a question: what happens to the collaborative electronic work style when maybe not everyone has a computer at home?

“It’s definitely something I need to be aware of,” said Jennifer Dahlstrom, a science teacher at ICE. “I can’t require students to collaborate on a document for homework if I know there are students who won’t have reliable Wi-Fi that night.”

Out of 50 kids in her section, she said, maybe 10 percent have trouble connecting outside the classroom. “The number’s getting smaller,” she said, “because there’s functionality on the phone. Almost all of them have smartphones. At the high school level, almost 99 percent.”

Michael Rosenbaum reports that ICE, being a typically resource-constrained New York City public school, has roughly one (Windows) laptop for every two kids. So the kids share in the classroom, and more than a few bring their own computer.

Accountability and accessibility in the cloud

Bonnie Robinson is the director of curriculum, instruction, and assessment for Lebanon High School in Lebanon, New Hampshire. It’s a district that includes many kids of Dartmouth College faculty, but she said 20 percent of the students qualify for free or reduced-cost lunch. She says the digital divide isn’t much of a problem at her school. “We have Chromebooks, laptops, and desktop computers available in several locations at school,” she said. “Most have both computers and Internet access at home, but those few who do not manage to work around that challenge. All kids have smart phones, and these are used for many purposes—mostly social, but also for school work. Many students prefer to use their phones” rather than a larger device.

Robinson also said that the cloud-based classroom enforces accountability, because the students can always look up the assignment and get the resources to complete it. Tools like PowerSchool let parents track grades and completion of assignments, and ICE uses Jupitergrades for the same purpose.

With all this work getting done electronically, it would be reasonable to expect that it would allow the creation of a durable digital portfolio. That, however, seems to be a challenge yet to be surmounted. “We’re still developing digital portfolios,” said ICE’s Dalhstrom. “We haven’t found something that’s affordable that we’re happy with.” Instead, she said, kids store their work on their own Google Drive. Jeremy Rosenbaum says most of the work ultimately gets printed out anyway.

In Hancock, Robinson says that the school’s IT department disables students' accounts the August after they graduate, so they’re encouraged to download their work to their personal accounts.

As far as parental involvement goes, Dahlstrom agrees with my gut feeling. “I do have the feeling that they (parents) are not as involved,” she said. “Parents used to be able to go through their kids’ bags to see the work,” which is no longer an option.

But the ultimate question is this: the comfort and enthusiasm of parents, kids, teachers and administrators aside, does all this technology actually improve the educational result? “I think it’s a net positive,” Dalhstrom said. “Not a drastic net positive. It hasn’t changed my pedagogy. If it all disappeared, my class would still be fabulous.”

Dan Rosenbaum is a technology journalist who specializes in the intersection of technology and society.

55 Reader Comments

Huh. My homework was always my own responsibility to take care of, my parents weren't checking it beyond asking me if I did it.

But nothing here is technologically difficult to solve if parents really want to monitor it that closely. Give parents read-only access to their kids work. Done. And with something like Google Drive, I'm pretty sure that capability already exists. So...to some extent, this seems more like an issue of not understanding the tools rather than deficiencies in the tools or methods.

I don't know how non-techie parents manage, because I have to maintain two computers, each with multiple browsers in order to access all of the websites my kids are required to use for school. The compatibility matrix across all of the applications is ridiculous.

In one case, we tried five computers with different operating systems going all the way back to XP, various browser versions, and had to reach back out to the teacher to finally say we couldn't pull it off. She responded with "yeah, I can't get it to work either". Yay.

My kid sister is in 5th grade, and she's done quite a few collab projects with other students that require everyone doing their part on Google Docs and communicating outside of the classroom.

Now, a senior in university, I am envious of her getting this foundation, because I do not know how to do group assignments. It's not something I was ever taught to do. I only ever did individual assignments that I added my teammates names onto at the end, or tried to hide how lost I was as one person took the reins.

I'd be all for cloud homework if more devices had better parental controls (a la Kindle) so my kids didn't keep trying to "boss key" their iPad and get back to their homework from youtube whenever I walk in. At least with paper assignments, I don't have to see what they're doing up close to know it's homework.

I do not understand the need of some parents to micromanage their kids' work. Once a child is in high school, and even before that, your job as a parent it to make sure they are doing their homework. It is the teacher's job to ensure they are doing it correctly.

The parent's job should not be to do the work for their kids, but to provide the environment and support so they can be successful in doing it themselves. If the child is having an issue with how they are doing the work, then send and email or call the teacher to find out what is wrong and how you can help.

It's even easier today to review homework at that level if you desire, not more difficult as the story states. Have them share their document read-only with your google user and you can access the document on your phone, computer, etc. If it is a piece of paper, it was always in the locker, turned in, or lost in the past.

Certainly collaborative digital tools promise more enduring access to work. Parents just need to make sure their kids give them access to homework documents. As someone said above, before technology it was a piece of paper stuffed into a locker or backpack and likely thrown away. Getting an annotated document with teacher feedback via Google Docs would be so much better.

I am generally skeptical of technology tools in the classroom unless they are the best way to accomplish an educational goal. So long as teachers are using them as such I have no problem with it. The moment they stop being the best tool for the task, stop using them.

My kid sister is in 5th grade, and she's done quite a few collab projects with other students that require everyone doing their part on Google Docs and communicating outside of the classroom.

Now, a senior in university, I am envious of her getting this foundation, because I do not know how to do group assignments. It's not something I was ever taught to do. I only ever did individual assignments that I added my teammates names onto at the end, or tried to hide how lost I was as one person took the reins.

I'm... skeptical of this. I graduated with my masters in 2010 and most of my undergraduate major courses and virtually all of my graduate courses featured group work. We collaborated just fine using Word's change tracking tools and either emailing the file back and forth or using Dropbox. Collaboration's really not that new of a thing, at least at the university level, and certainly not at the professional level that I've been in for the past 7 years.

In the school my kids are in here, they issue devices (iPads or Macbook Air depending on grade) and refuse to allow parents to provide a device and still use the school WiFi.

For the first few years the school had no device management software, and kids pretty much got away with jailbreaking and doing whatever they wanted. On the school network there was little restriction, so once the devices were unlocked the kids could get to nearly anything online. Now they over lockdown the devices to the point they barely run a web browser (on the Macbooks) so doing anything off WiFi then submitting to Google Drive isn't an option.

With the overly unlocked and overly locked situations both, I would rather provide my own device and manage it at the level my child is ready for. Since they won't allow parent provided devices on WiFi, the only other option would be a cellular plan device, but the school also uses a lot of video content, so that really isn't an option either.

Since so much is going online for the school, just opting out of devices completely (no parent or school provided device) isn't an option or classwork is missed. (they claim they would give paper assignments, but the things I've seen them do online, couldn't possibly convert to paper easily, and still get a good learning experience.)

I graduated from College in 2015 and did 99.9% of my schoolwork in Google Docs. Every class shared documents, assignments, textbooks, and study guides on Google Drive. It's really nice to have an extensive history of my assignments and every class I took saved in my Google Drive.

My kid sister is in 5th grade, and she's done quite a few collab projects with other students that require everyone doing their part on Google Docs and communicating outside of the classroom.

Now, a senior in university, I am envious of her getting this foundation, because I do not know how to do group assignments. It's not something I was ever taught to do. I only ever did individual assignments that I added my teammates names onto at the end, or tried to hide how lost I was as one person took the reins.

I think your lack of comfort in group settings has more to do with where you went to school, than technology, or a lack of it. I graduated high school in 1996 and was doing group work as far back as elementary school in the late 1980s.

FWIW, you are not alone. My wife recently graduated from college and her largest complaint was how worthless most of her group members were. In any group of a dozen people, one or two people always seemed to do all of the work.

One of the things I noticed in the article was how it mentioned that Google Docs shows how much individual students contribute to the final product. Simple things like that should eventually help increase group participation.

I do not understand the need of some parents to micromanage their kids' work. Once a child is in high school, and even before that, your job as a parent it to make sure they are doing their homework. It is the teacher's job to ensure they are doing it correctly.

The parent's job should not be to do the work for their kids, but to provide the environment and support so they can be successful in doing it themselves. If the child is having an issue with how they are doing the work, then send and email or call the teacher to find out what is wrong and how you can help.

It's even easier today to review homework at that level if you desire, not more difficult as the story states. Have them share their document read-only with your google user and you can access the document on your phone, computer, etc. If it is a piece of paper, it was always in the locker, turned in, or lost in the past.

Some children need more help than others. In theory, it could be quite easy to do what you say. In practice, my experience matches that of wallinbl.

My kid sister is in 5th grade, and she's done quite a few collab projects with other students that require everyone doing their part on Google Docs and communicating outside of the classroom.

Now, a senior in university, I am envious of her getting this foundation, because I do not know how to do group assignments. It's not something I was ever taught to do. I only ever did individual assignments that I added my teammates names onto at the end, or tried to hide how lost I was as one person took the reins.

I'm... skeptical of this. I graduated with my masters in 2010 and most of my undergraduate major courses and virtually all of my graduate courses featured group work. We collaborated just fine using Word's change tracking tools and either emailing the file back and forth or using Dropbox. Collaboration's really not that new of a thing, at least at the university level, and certainly not at the professional level that I've been in for the past 7 years.

Sorry, I guess I should have clarified. It's not that I don't encounter group assignments. I've had to do a ton of them. I've done Dropbox and emailing the file... but to me doing work in the cloud and having a solid outline of "here is what each person contributed" is different. Maybe I've just had bad experiences, but in the past I've always had to track people down, track files down, reiterate that yes, that part is your responsibility, what do you mean you didn't do it, and usually ended up burning the midnight oil to cover what someone else neglected.... only to have them share my grade. Who did what was a he-said she-said that usually I didn't bother arguing because I didn't want to be that guy.

I was introduced to Google Docs in college and that changed, because suddenly my instructors can see if one or two people were carrying the load. It encouraged people to actually do the work. I don't know how to do group work in the sense that that type of communication is new to me. I'm not used to pulling up a shared assignment and actually finding that others did what they were supposed to.

All I was saying was that when I was her age, I was stepped on a lot during shared assignments, and I'm glad that now there is an added level of accountability, as well as more being learned through collaboration.

I do not understand the need of some parents to micromanage their kids' work. Once a child is in high school, and even before that, your job as a parent it to make sure they are doing their homework. It is the teacher's job to ensure they are doing it correctly.

This is why I like the idea of the "reverse classroom", they've tried it in a few places around the country, basically it gets rid of homework as we know it. The "homework" consists of watching a video lecture or reading the material, basically the lesson normally given in the classrooom is given at home. Then, when the student is in class, and has the assistance of the teacher, he or she does the work that would normally be given as homework. Can't find the article now of course, but there was a school in Colorado that did it, grades went up and the dropout rate went to nearly zero in a year.

I do not understand the need of some parents to micromanage their kids' work. Once a child is in high school, and even before that, your job as a parent it to make sure they are doing their homework. It is the teacher's job to ensure they are doing it correctly.

This is why I like the idea of the "reverse classroom", they've tried it in a few places around the country, basically it gets rid of homework as we know it. The "homework" consists of watching a video lecture or reading the material, basically the lesson normally given in the classrooom is given at home. Then, when the student is in class, and has the assistance of the teacher, he or she does the work that would normally be given as homework. Can't find the article now of course, but there was a school in Colorado that did it, grades went up and the dropout rate went to nearly zero in a year.

it's flipped not reverse I only corrected it because how much of a thing this really is.

I do not understand the need of some parents to micromanage their kids' work. Once a child is in high school, and even before that, your job as a parent it to make sure they are doing their homework. It is the teacher's job to ensure they are doing it correctly.

The parent's job should not be to do the work for their kids, but to provide the environment and support so they can be successful in doing it themselves. If the child is having an issue with how they are doing the work, then send and email or call the teacher to find out what is wrong and how you can help.

It's even easier today to review homework at that level if you desire, not more difficult as the story states. Have them share their document read-only with your google user and you can access the document on your phone, computer, etc. If it is a piece of paper, it was always in the locker, turned in, or lost in the past.

Because some people have kids like I was. Never did a lick of homework as I didn't feel I had to 'prove' I knew what I was doing as I could just pick it up from the teacher explaining it and practicing one or two problems. I failed all the homework assignments, aced all the tests, got a 34 on my ACT and graduated with a 2.0 average. The only two classes I ever made As in were Calculus where the teacher never gave homework, just expected you to do the test and two English classes where all of the grades were based on memorization of works, tests, or analysis of literature done in class.

Note looking back from the ripe old age of 42 I realize that was bad for my future and am working to be different with my kids.

I realize different districts have different rules, and sometimes these rules get created in a vacuum and not actually thought out well or changed to meet new understandings, but…

Quote:

It’s just, as Michael told me, that it’s simpler to do something on the computer, upload it to their Google Drive, and click Share with their teachers.

Is there some reason in this process that Michael can't share the uploaded document with you? Or do it entirely in Google docs, with it shared with you? At a very worst case, making a copy and emailing it to you, or printing it out…

I'm just failing to see why if you WANT to see their homework, you can't, in any way that's different from paper homework, except for the new excuses to be found about simply not doing it from not wanting to, versus not actually being able to.

I realize maybe the related anecdotes were just meant as props to lead in to:

Quote:

But this process raises a question: what happens to the collaborative electronic work style when maybe not everyone has a computer at home?

because I'm well aware of accessibility issues both in general and when discussing tech topics, where sometimes certain difficulties are overlooked.

But if that's not the case, I'm kind of curious what the actual impediments were in the particular context used?

I do not understand the need of some parents to micromanage their kids' work. Once a child is in high school, and even before that, your job as a parent it to make sure they are doing their homework. It is the teacher's job to ensure they are doing it correctly.

This is why I like the idea of the "reverse classroom", they've tried it in a few places around the country, basically it gets rid of homework as we know it. The "homework" consists of watching a video lecture or reading the material, basically the lesson normally given in the classrooom is given at home. Then, when the student is in class, and has the assistance of the teacher, he or she does the work that would normally be given as homework. Can't find the article now of course, but there was a school in Colorado that did it, grades went up and the dropout rate went to nearly zero in a year.

It's definitely a big thing, and probably the right way to do teaching if it can't be both. A teacher's presence is important for being able to answer questions while teaching, but in terms of the learning experience itself and late retention, the absolute key is how often the student is required to produce material (tests, homework, etc, although writing notes is significant in this too but doesn't represent the same levels due to the differences in the interaction) related to what is being learnt.

The other big one that I'm not sure is used as much (other than in the ways many courses build on earlier material) is [appropriately] spaced repetition, particularly when focused around using interactive production measures (exercises/tests/homework/etc). It's VERY interesting because related studies generally show that short intervals increase temporally close retention results (like a test done the same week), but fall off quickly (such as tests done months later), while longer spacing usually sees no change from the control for shorter term tests but strong improvement in long term retention.

I don't know how non-techie parents manage, because I have to maintain two computers, each with multiple browsers in order to access all of the websites my kids are required to use for school. The compatibility matrix across all of the applications is ridiculous.

In one case, we tried five computers with different operating systems going all the way back to XP, various browser versions, and had to reach back out to the teacher to finally say we couldn't pull it off. She responded with "yeah, I can't get it to work either". Yay.

Let me guess, Blackboard?

Quote:

“It’s definitely something I need to be aware of,” said Jennifer Dahlstrom, a science teacher at ICE. “I can’t require students to collaborate on a document for homework if I know there are students who won’t have reliable Wi-Fi that night.”

Out of 50 kids in her section, she said, maybe 10 percent have trouble connecting outside the classroom. “The number’s getting smaller,” she said, “because there’s functionality on the phone. Almost all of them have smartphones. At the high school level, almost 99 percent.”

If only we regulated Internet broadband access as a necessary public utility...

My fear here is, as others have pointed out, what happens with kids who's parents aren't tech savvy or just in poverty?

I remember going to school with kids who's parents didn't even have a working phone because it was disconnected or too expensive....I can't imagine this generations iteration of poor people can suddenly afford reasonable broadband and WiFi.

I went to an elementary school where I was one of the rich kids because BOTH my parents worked lower middle class jobs and we lived in a house...."group projects" always felt like a complete disaster because I'd get grouped up with some poor sap who's single mom couldn't drive him to the library or whatever between her two jobs, so he'd either show up after having to walk 2-3 miles or not at all.

I've never liked homework or outside of school work for these reasons....there's such a huge gap in the amount of support a kid may have at home and what another may not. At the high school level it's a different story to some degree, but this is only going to get exacerbated as expensive tech is expected out of everybody to survive.

I'm worried about this trend. I'm poor and can't afford the internet ("stealing" it right now xD) and my daughter needs a lot of one on one help, we'd have to walk 15min away to Starbucks for public wifi if there's not an open one around.

Huh. My homework was always my own responsibility to take care of, my parents weren't checking it beyond asking me if I did it.

But nothing here is technologically difficult to solve if parents really want to monitor it that closely. Give parents read-only access to their kids work. Done. And with something like Google Drive, I'm pretty sure that capability already exists. So...to some extent, this seems more like an issue of not understanding the tools rather than deficiencies in the tools or methods.

Unless the school I teach at is incredibly unique (unlikely), there are ways for parents to keep tabs on what kids are doing if they feel so inclined. (My parents were not so inclined, but a lot of our parents are.) Kids can give the aforementioned read-only access through Onedrive or through Google Drive (they can choose!), and the LMS we use allows us to add parents as observers so they can see what materials kids have access to, assignment calendars, and everything else.

Huh. My homework was always my own responsibility to take care of, my parents weren't checking it beyond asking me if I did it.

But nothing here is technologically difficult to solve if parents really want to monitor it that closely. Give parents read-only access to their kids work. Done. And with something like Google Drive, I'm pretty sure that capability already exists. So...to some extent, this seems more like an issue of not understanding the tools rather than deficiencies in the tools or methods.

At some point, yes. However, I suspect as a young child your parents helped you with your homework and held you to some level of accountability.

I know my parents did. Though by middle school it was all on me. I think I asked for help a couple of times on papers, mostly for some ideas and some proof reading (before there were reliable word processors with things called spell check).

These days, I review my sons' math homework for correctness and I help my oldest with ideas for writing assignments. Basically he has to write a paragraph about "anything you want" once a week.

They are in 3rd and 1st grades right now. My oldest son's teacher told us to go ahead and let him type it up and email it to her if it was easier than him writing it out. Considering how he does a lot of stream of consciousness writing and is still working (a lot) on spelling, it is vastly more legible and an easier time and with spell checker (and me sitting next to him) he has better instant feedback on correcting his spelling. Which I have noticed improving.

My oldest has ADD and honestly typing it helps focus him a bit more than trying to write it out as he concentrates on typing. His younger brother doesn't show any signs of ADD yet, but he doesn't have writing assignments yet. Just math. Both are in advanced math which is fun and interesting. Though we are pushing for my oldest to be in GT math next year (so 6th grade math in 4th grade) as regular advanced math is boring to him. My younger son is in kind of a similar position. They just moved him to advanced math (4 out of 30 odd kids tested in to it, so the 4 1st graders take 2nd grade math with the 2nd graders. My older son there were enough kids in advanced math to have their own class). It is playing catch-up for my younger son, but frankly he has already mastered many of the concepts.

I kind of suspect my younger son is going to be on a similar track.

Which makes me proud to see them exceed me. I had pretty strong ADD which didn't get diagnosed until I was in 4th grade, but even then I've had a strong streak of mental laziness (not physical though). I certainly enjoy stretching my mental muscles a lot, but I find school often boring and repetitive. I think some of the issue may have been NOT pushing myself hard enough to find interest. Anyway, I didn't start advanced math until 7th grade. My older son seems to enjoy and understand science at least as well as I did at his age (IE really well, I've always loved and gotten science a lot more than math). His younger brother if anything is even better at science.

My daughter who starts Kindergarten next year, dunno. She certain shows all the signs of possibly exceeding her brothers.

But for "on the computer", my oldest son also has math homework on the computer sometimes. It seems to be a better educational experience for him. He seems to be more interested in it and there tend to both be more math problems, expressed in different ways and with better instant feedback (though with the paper stuff I provide it for him for now).

I do not understand the need of some parents to micromanage their kids' work. Once a child is in high school, and even before that, your job as a parent it to make sure they are doing their homework. It is the teacher's job to ensure they are doing it correctly.

The parent's job should not be to do the work for their kids, but to provide the environment and support so they can be successful in doing it themselves. If the child is having an issue with how they are doing the work, then send and email or call the teacher to find out what is wrong and how you can help.

It's even easier today to review homework at that level if you desire, not more difficult as the story states. Have them share their document read-only with your google user and you can access the document on your phone, computer, etc. If it is a piece of paper, it was always in the locker, turned in, or lost in the past.

Because some people have kids like I was. Never did a lick of homework as I didn't feel I had to 'prove' I knew what I was doing as I could just pick it up from the teacher explaining it and practicing one or two problems. I failed all the homework assignments, aced all the tests, got a 34 on my ACT and graduated with a 2.0 average. The only two classes I ever made As in were Calculus where the teacher never gave homework, just expected you to do the test and two English classes where all of the grades were based on memorization of works, tests, or analysis of literature done in class.

Note looking back from the ripe old age of 42 I realize that was bad for my future and am working to be different with my kids.

I managed a much better grade that that out of high school, but I habitually did not do homework and left projects until the last minute. So I graduated high school with a 3.29 and a 1530 on my SATs and 20 AP credits having gotten 5s on all of my AP exams. I am also working to do better than that for my kids. Fortunately my wife was a hard worker through school (and also graduated with something like a 3.7 from high school, a 3.8 for her BA and I think a 4.0 for her MS). So she is better at modeling that for our kids, but I still work to keep them on track (I worry the most about our oldest. His ADD is worse than mine was, about on the level of my wife's...who is worse than I am. As an adult I can cope okay without medication. As an adult she often can't without medication).

Hopefully teaching them better habits and pushing them harder in to areas where they will feel really challenged so they will try harder.

Huh. My homework was always my own responsibility to take care of, my parents weren't checking it beyond asking me if I did it.

But nothing here is technologically difficult to solve if parents really want to monitor it that closely. Give parents read-only access to their kids work. Done. And with something like Google Drive, I'm pretty sure that capability already exists. So...to some extent, this seems more like an issue of not understanding the tools rather than deficiencies in the tools or methods.

Unless the school I teach at is incredibly unique (unlikely), there are ways for parents to keep tabs on what kids are doing if they feel so inclined. (My parents were not so inclined, but a lot of our parents are.) Kids can give the aforementioned read-only access through Onedrive or through Google Drive (they can choose!), and the LMS we use allows us to add parents as observers so they can see what materials kids have access to, assignment calendars, and everything else.

Your assumption is that the kids can choose is invalid. Kids (especially pre-high school) actually do not necessarily control their school accounts and parents usually have no access to it. Second, schools do not or cannot share things like grades and progress (often incompetence by the school, the software and the software providers) or fail to update information in a timely manner.

I do not understand the need of some parents to micromanage their kids' work. Once a child is in high school, and even before that, your job as a parent it to make sure they are doing their homework. It is the teacher's job to ensure they are doing it correctly.

The parent's job should not be to do the work for their kids, but to provide the environment and support so they can be successful in doing it themselves. If the child is having an issue with how they are doing the work, then send and email or call the teacher to find out what is wrong and how you can help.

It's even easier today to review homework at that level if you desire, not more difficult as the story states. Have them share their document read-only with your google user and you can access the document on your phone, computer, etc. If it is a piece of paper, it was always in the locker, turned in, or lost in the past.

Because some people have kids like I was. Never did a lick of homework as I didn't feel I had to 'prove' I knew what I was doing as I could just pick it up from the teacher explaining it and practicing one or two problems. I failed all the homework assignments, aced all the tests, got a 34 on my ACT and graduated with a 2.0 average. The only two classes I ever made As in were Calculus where the teacher never gave homework, just expected you to do the test and two English classes where all of the grades were based on memorization of works, tests, or analysis of literature done in class.

Note looking back from the ripe old age of 42 I realize that was bad for my future and am working to be different with my kids.

Preach on brother!

I did great IN school on tests or whatever, and rarely did a lick of homework that I wasn't directly interested in....

But, I've always had mad work ethic. I was working 20-30 hours a week in my last couple years of high school between 3 jobs and frequently 40+ in the summers (you can skirt child labor laws by working MULTIPLE jobs, fun fact) with the idea of saving money for college that wound up raising costs so much I had to drop out anyways. Irony is if I'd gotten a slightly higher GPA, with my ACT scores, would have gotten a full scholarship from a state university. Ah well. Decade and a half later I'm in a job that 99% of people have a degree to get into and not student loan debt, so is what it is.

All I was saying was that when I was her age, I was stepped on a lot during shared assignments, and I'm glad that now there is an added level of accountability, as well as more being learned through collaboration.

I fully agree. Young kids can have a lot of trouble with group assignments exactly because developing the discipline and ethics to share the work in a fair manner is difficult. Overzealous parents are a problem, but young kids need some supervision on getting things done.

In middle school the teachers would walk around and check our assignment notebooks (there was some special name for it, I forget) and some would initial that the assignment was written down correctly. Then parents could look and see exactly what you were assigned to do to make sure you weren't ignoring homework.

In high school this migrated to some teachers having small websites they posted assignments on and others E-mailing the parents and students a copy of the assignments for the week.

Most have both computers and Internet access at home, but those few who do not manage to work around that challenge.

There's two issues I see with this -- one is not everyone has internet. I work as a software engineer and some of my coworkers live in rural areas without home internet. Their "solution" is to do any browsing at work on a company machine and their home computer is just a big portable DVD player.

The second issue, people who do have access normally sometimes have issues with it and when that happens suddenly they have no clue what to do. I've had to let neighbors use my internet (and computers!) when they had a contractor was digging and hit the power feed going to their house and blew up the main feed, kids had no way to get on the computer nor internet to do their work. Another time my parents lost internet for several days because someone was digging in a nearby lot and cut thru a major fiber trunk knocking out phone, TV, and internet - they had to call me from their feature-phone cellphones for anything they wanted to search for (including weather) where I could then search it at my place and tell them the answer.

Another issue is car trips - I know when I was in school we'd be going to visit relatives and I'd be working on homework in the back seat. Doesn't work too well if you need internet and power - even now that I have a MiFi and power inverter installed in my car there's still enough dead zones as you drive thru the middle of nowhere farmland that it can't be depended on for anything more critical than music.

Quote:

All kids have smart phones, and these are used for many purposes—mostly social, but also for school work. Many students prefer to use their phones

Bad assumption on the school's part...I have a few co-workers who don't have cellphones and don't buy them for their kids either. Most of the rest have feature-phones and may or may not get their kids one.

My kid sister is in 5th grade, and she's done quite a few collab projects with other students that require everyone doing their part on Google Docs and communicating outside of the classroom.

Now, a senior in university, I am envious of her getting this foundation, because I do not know how to do group assignments. It's not something I was ever taught to do. I only ever did individual assignments that I added my teammates names onto at the end, or tried to hide how lost I was as one person took the reins.

Heh.

I'm reminded of my class getting a particular speech every time we were about to graduate to "the next level." It never really changed, and it went something like this:

"You guys got away with being slackers in grade school, but in high school, you'll have ten times as much work, it'll be ten times harder, and you won't be able to get away with slacking off anymore."

I got some form of that speech in grade school, then high school, then college. Always, the "next level" was gonna be the "real deal."

But nope! In grade school, in a given group of five people on a group project, two of them do all the work... and it's not that different in high school, college, or in the working world.

I had a grand total of one time when "justice was served" on this front, in college. I'll share because I think it's pretty funny/diabolical.

I was in junior year of college, in some IT class I don't remember the name of... some sort of development class. I was in a group of 5 and, surprise surprise, myself and one teammate did all the work. Our "supporting cast" consisted of:*One guy who had the technical knowledge but just didn't care about the class at all and never showed up for meetings.*Another guy with no subject-matter-knowledge, no desire to learn, and sat in meetings saying nothing and hoping no one noticed him contributed zilch... and direct requests for him to do work were met with "but I'm so busy" (he had half my course-load and no job).*A loud-mouthed girl who took 5 minutes drawing up a really awful, worthless context diagram at the beginning of the project, which we had to modify so heavily that it was beyond recognition in a matter of days... yet she thought this made her the leader of the group; she showed up to every 2nd meeting and talked a lot, considered her job done, and left the two of us to do the actual work. Never was interested in the work part. Just "directing."

Our team's lack of offering anything remotely resembling "help" really grated on the two of us, and led to us not being able to finish. I had 21 credits, two jobs that added up to 35 hours of work per week, and my one teammate's workload was even more, if you can believe that. We just couldn't possibly finish without some help. Fortunately for us, we kept the professor apprised of that fact throughout the semester.

Here was the professor's solution: since our big issues were that the team refused to show up to meetings, refused to work to make contributions, and never bothered responding to our messages, she would give our group an "incomplete" on the year-end project. Since we were all juniors, we could make up the work over the summer or in the early part of the next year.

But here comes the brilliant part. The professor split us into two groups... the two workers were one group, the three slackers were the other. The two groups were supposed to take our half-finished team project, and each finish it independently... and she didn't tell the slacker team this. She only told them it needed to be finished, and by when. The two of us were instructed to brush them all off and say we were busy with other things whenever they asked about progress on the project, as they had us. The idea was that they were supposed to figure out it wasn't getting done, and actually do some work themselves instead (gasp!). She said that if any of the three of them ever bothered to come to her and ask what's up, she'd tell them exactly what's going on.

Not hard to predict what happened next. They failed. We passed. And it was delicious.

Far cry from the late 80's where there was Oregon Trail and some Algebra software on the Apple II in the Library. A computer classroom with all TRS-80's teaching Basic and Pascal, an ancient card punch reader in the back collecting dust. A typing class with IBM Selectric typewriters. At home, I had an Atari 800XL (equivalent to a Commodore 64) and later on, the Atari ST. I completed my college papers and notebooks on that Atari ST desktop publishing system. I hand wrote notebooks along with diagrams and each night typed it all up and printed it, three-hole punched and put in a binder.

I fear that doing everything online takes away from the classroom instruction. All those laptops hammering away while the professor is giving a lecture. I would be the old fart still writing in notebooks on paper. But I would still transpose those notes into digital form as well as completing homework. Would likely use LaTeX, git, and OmniGraffle for diagramming. Producing docx files if it was actually required. PDF should be enough and instructors could markup PDF easily enough. The only time I'd use a computer in class would be computer science and engineering courses where it's really required. I might pop a laptop on the desk with the lid open but that notebook would still be the primary tool.